Cops, anarchists, bottled beer. More than 20 years after the fall of the Wall, almost all that’s left of Kreuzberg’s three main ingredients while the Wall stood is the bottled beer. Where counter-culture once ruled, today alternative residues, the proletarian basis, and luxuriating middle classes practise a volatile co-existence. Very few have examined the change in this neighbourhood more closely than Klaus Bittermann. “Kreuzberger Szenen” is the title of the prose miniatures about this bizarre microcosm by the journalist, author and publisher – and many see in them “truly great literature”, and Bittermann as a legitimate successor to literary flâneurs Walter Benjamin and Franz Hessel.
Are the inhabitants of this legendary village the descendants of the dull colonist folk that Karl Scheffel castigated in his famous writing from 1910, “Berlin-ein Stadtschicksal”? Are they the vanguard of the neo-liberal economy? Are the nights in Kreuzberg still long? And what does all this have to do with art? This event at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, right at the heart of Bittermann’s neighbourhood, aims to tackle such questions.

Klaus Bittermann
Möbel zu Hause, aber kein Geld für Alkohol / Furniture at home, but no money for booze
Kreuzberger Szenen / Scenes of Kreuzberg
Presenter: Ingo Arend